Monday Musings: Big Priced Winners Hiding in Plain Sight

/in /by

Where to start about Cheltenham? Ever since the race following the Gold Cup on Friday afternoon, I resolved to write about a 66/1 winner that if we bothered (or had the time) to look closely at all the form, we could have been laughing all the way, if not to the bank, certainly to make a dent in our gas and electricity balances, writes Tony Stafford.

Earlier in the day a friend asked me to offer a shortie and a an each-way alternative for the last six races – Lossiemouth had already dotted in when he called. I won’t go into my unambitious, yet unsuccessful, calls, but I did have an opinion on the St James Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase.

I had a memory of the name Vaucelet, stablemate and chosen entry of three fancies for David Christie, whose Winged Leader was runner-up last year to the famed Irish standing dish Billaway, giving his Northern Ireland-based handler a change of luck. The old-timer Billaway was again in the field and was destined to fall before the action heated up.

Vaucelet had come over to the UK twice for races at the big May hunter chase showcase at Stratford. In 2021 he won the novice championship as a 6yo and a 4/1 shot, while a month after a Punchestown near-miss, behind Billaway, Vaucelet collected the Championship Hunter Chase, sponsored by Pertemps in the 63rd running for the Horse and Hound Cup.

He preceded the first UK win with hunter/point form figures that season of 21111 and since it, he’s gone 113112111. No wonder, you (as I did) might say, he was the 9/4 favourite in the 23 runner field.

Yet hiding in that line up, freely available at 66/1, was a horse that had started 11/4 off levels with Vaucelet in that Stratford novice championship.

This horse, namely Premier Magic, made the running that day and had just been headed before stumbling after jumping the last. He rallied on the flat but could do no better than a close third. He was pulled up in last year’s Cheltenham race but had the excuse of being badly crowded coming down the hill.

When he came back for that second shot against Billaway and Vaucelet, he had since been confined to point-to-points by his Welsh-based trainer and rider, Bradley Gibbs.

If Vaucelet had busily been picking up the pots on offer in the pointing field across the water, our unsung hero had been similarly campaigned. From March 2020 to Stratford in May 2021, his form figures were 21111. Since the defeat there, it was 11111 before Friday. His last win came by 14 lengths in the open at Garthorpe in February when an 8/11 favourite.

Yet he started 66/1 at Cheltenham last week! He was lucky to be clear of the late scrimmaging caused by loose horses, but he battled on genuinely, hardly a surprise with all those wins on his record. Meanwhile Vaucelet was struggling home in seventh.

Take a bow, Bradley Gibbs and Premier Magic. Some of those point-to-point experts will have been either rubbing their hands or cursing their lack of faith having backed or missed such a potential goldmine horse. I must give Jonathan Neesom a call to ask him if he had a few quid on.

Bradley Gibbs trains the horse for his partner’s father and was publicly grateful for the support given to him in developing their yard in Wales. None of the big names at the other end of the ownership rainbow would have been more deserving of satisfaction at their work of the past three years with this son of Court Cave.

As well as a Welsh winner, there was also a better-known Scottish-trained winner as Corach Rambler repeated last year’s victory in the Ultima Handicap Chase off a 6lb higher mark. This was only his 3rd run since and when Tom Scudamore came to the preview night in London he predicted this success, also that he would follow up in the Grand National.

Tom’s father, Peter Scudamore, is partner and assistant trainer to Lucinda Russell, so an element of insider information was involved there. On that preview event, at one point I was asked my bet of the week and repeated what I’d mentioned in my column here, Langer Dan on Thursday; but, by race day, I’d forgotten all about it.

So, what else from the week? I could go through the 18-10 Ireland domination over the home team, or talk about Constitution Hill, Honeysuckle and plenty more, but I imagine you’ve seen and read plenty about all of that. I’ll look for something different.

When the rain came, my thoughts were that on soft ground the potential for, if not catastrophe, then certainly mishaps, would be greatly increased. There were upwards of 400 runners over the four days and the quality of the preparation of these horses was such that only 12 were documented as having fallen. To those, you could add five unseated, with the odd horse brought down.

More predictable was the 80 pulled up, around 20 per cent of the total. Most unlikely was the Ultima which, as I’ve mentioned, was won by Corach Rambler. He headed home the Martin Brassil-trained Fastorslow, Jonjo O’Neill’s Monbeg Genius and another Irishman in The Goffer, the front four in the betting.

Notably unflattering outcomes for the home team were the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on day one when the first eight home were trained in Ireland, unusually with Barry Connell the winning trainer (and owner) rather than Willie Mullins. The half-mile longer Ballymore on the second day provided a 1-2-3 for Mullins and he gained revenge on Connell, who predicted his Good Land would win. Eventually, with his horse fourth some way behind the Mullins trio, the status quo restored.

There was never a doubt that the Mullins fillies would dominate the Triumph Hurdle on Friday. Perhaps the most remarkable fact of this race was that all five of the expensively acquired arrivals from France in the spring last year stood their ground, never mind the soft ground.

Lossiemouth pulled almost from the off, but this time getting a clear wide course under Paul Townend, she had far too much class for stablemate Gala Marceau, who had beaten her when she got a nightmare run at the Dublin Racing Festival, and Zenta, a close third. Susanna Ricci, Honeysuckle’s owner Kenny Alexander, and J P McManus are the proud owners of the flying fillies. It was miles back to the first gelding, also Mullins-trained.

The trio of UK runners were 11th, 13th and pulled up.

But there was isolated and not so isolated fighting back where Paul Nicholls and former pupil dan Skelton were concerned. Nicholls won two of the Grade 1 races (Stage Star in the Turners’ and Stay Away Fay in the Albert Bartlett), backing up Champion Hurdle win number nine for Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill. He was also an excellent second with Bravemansgame behind flying Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs from the Mullins team.

Once again Skelton pulled a couple of handicap rabbits out of the hat. It took Langer Dan three Festivals to win his race in the Coral Cup, but less expected was Bridget Andrews’ (Mrs Harry Skelton to her tradesmen) win on Faivoir, denying four Irish rivals pursuing her up the hill. She’s done it before – with Mohaayed, also in the County Hurdle, also at 33/1, and also trained by Dan Skelton – and is always a name to look out for in these highly competitive races with hosts of dangerous invaders to worry about.

In fact, the Skeltons do it so often, it’s almost as if it’s planned! Some operation that, and they know what’s needed to beat the Irish in any race at the Festival. We can’t wait for the next one.

- TS

Monday Musings: On Lord Oaksey and the Constitution

/in /by

All those preview nights; all those column inches and television opinions and now, the ground, if you please, is soft, writes Tony Stafford. And if the forecast I saw on BBC weather on Saturday is correct - I still look at it first even though you don’t get much worth having for your licence fee these days, ask Gary Lineker - it’s bound to get softer.

Day by day, hour by hour, the rain will intrude. The same precipitation that wilfully stayed away in the autumn and for much of the winter, then suddenly decided to turn up. Ironically, it materialised just when trainers of soft ground horses were barely going through the motions of training them, so sure had been the long-range prognostications of fast ground. Now, though, we can expect buckets of the stuff.

Only two weeks ago at a preview evening when good/good to soft was the undercurrent, we had to be aware that while the course officials would do their darndest to maintain it, Cheltenham and its far too efficient drainage would surely sort/rule that out. Beware running soft-ground horses on it had to be the message!

Now, though, the capricious UK weather has shown its full force. Nicky Richards planned a five-horse raid at Ayr the other day. On the wet west coast of Scotland in early March, the ground was fast and three of the quintet stayed home.

Yet here we are after a few rain showers and a couple of blankets of snow, and it’s shaping up like those days of yore when the Irish used to come over and relish the sight of hock-deep mud and jockeys twirling their whips like shillelaghs.

It’s March 14 tomorrow and already trainers I talk to regularly are avoiding risking winning novice chases with potential high-class prospects as we’re getting dangerously close to the late April cut-off point for season 2022-23.

Something needs to be done about that. Most of the top stables don’t really get going until October bringing in their top horses. Cheltenham in March is not just the Holy Grail, for many it’s the Only Grail and when you look at this week’s cards, that fact is driven home ever more forcibly. Equally, after Aintree next month, there’s not much left, either.

I thought I’d check up on Willie Mullins. He has declared 24 horses for tomorrow’s opening phase. He has 43 entered for Wednesday, 22 on Thursday and 27 on Friday. I’m guessing he’ll win eight races. Just a guess, though.

To business, Constitution Hill will not worry if the ground is fast, good, soft, heavy or under water. He’ll win as he likes and write another page in his and Nicky Henderson’s legend.

I mentioned shillelaghs earlier, advisably because it reminded me of one Cheltenham Festival meeting when the late and more than great John (Lord) Oaksey penned one of his most memorable outpourings.

And outpourings they were! It started something like this – I subbed it in the office that night and wish I’d kept it in my inside pocket for the 46 years that have elapsed since that awful day.

“Only two stands blew down at Cheltenham yesterday, the Irish only won four <I think> races and two of England’s greatest ever jumps horses, Bula’s and Lanzarote’s careers came to an untimely end.”

Both horses were trained in Lambourn by Fred Winter, the multiple champion jump jockey who progressed to even more fame and success as a trainer of elite racehorses and future trainers, among them Nicky Henderson and Oliver Sherwood.

Both horses were coming to the end of distinguished careers. Bula, winner of the Champion Hurdle in 1971 and 1972, won 32 more races over eight seasons until his fall at the fifth fence in the Two-Mile Champion Chase on that fateful day. He sustained torn shoulder muscles. For a while as he convalesced it was hoped he could be saved but after two months, one leg became almost totally paralysed and he was put down, aged 12, robbed of an honourable retirement.

The denouement was even more stark for Lanzarote. Selected to run in the Gold Cup, which was thought to be Bula’s target, Lanzarote was an early casualty, broke a leg and was destroyed. He, too, was a Champion Hurdle winner, in 1974.

Imagine the trauma for Winter, his staff and the horses’ owners. Both horses were regarded as superior champions of the breed. In the highly respected assessment of the Best Horses of the 20th Century, John Randall and Tony Morris rated Bula 5th best hurdler, only behind fellow champions Night Nurse, their number one, Persian War, Monksfield and Comedy Of Errors and ahead of Istabraq. Timeform put Lanzarote in their top ten hurdlers of all time.

One person who will have been as devastated as anyone that day – the future Lord Oaksey included – was Nicky Henderson. He was Winter’s number one assistant at the time of those twin tragedies and didn’t start his own stable until the following year.

Tomorrow he can be in a position after almost half a century to write a new page in National Hunt history by sending out Constitution Hill to usurp all those wonderful horses, names I grew up with just as he did.

Mullins, Henderson, Elliott, De Bromhead, Nicholls and the rest. They all wait for the good horse, but first need to land the big fish who will pay for the privilege of having horses in their elite and winning-most yards.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Willie Mullins stranglehold on Friday’s Triumph Hurdle. Of seven in the field, he still has two geldings and five fillies confirmed among 17 six-day declarations.

Gala Marceau, who won the juvenile race at the Dublin Racing Festival when original favourite Lossiemouth suffered a troubled run, now vies for the top spot, and Blood Destiny is the only other in the line-up on offer at less than 16/1.

All five fillies were bought from France, presumably for massive money and all have found their way into high-octane ownership. I hope all seven run and fill the first seven places. They pay down to eighth after all, although should any of the ten walk-on performers intervene, that would represent a slight on the Mullins method. Just joking, Willie!

I digress. Fundamental at the time was Oaksey’s concern with animal and rider welfare – he was a major figurehead in the original organisation of the Injured Jockeys’ Fund. He also found the flogging of horses to get every ounce from them in the typically near-waterlogged ground of those pre-drainage (and less global-warming affected) days to be total anathema.

I would imagine he might find the latest toughened whip rules to his liking, although Mullins and other top trainers seem to think that Cheltenham might be spoilt with jockeys concentrating more on counting than riding horses to their best.

John Oaksey was a force for good, causes and, above all, writing. As the son of the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trial, he could hardly have been anything else, never mind a wonderful colleague for many years. As they go up the hill for the first time tomorrow, his genial visage will slip briefly into the consciousness, before as he would wish it, thoughts turn quite rightly to the wonderful horses we are privileged to watch in action.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Future, via The Past…

/in /by

I got a call from Jonathan Powell the other day, writes Tony Stafford. He’d been at an Anthony Honeyball get-together attended by this site’s boss Matt Bisogno, who runs several syndicates with the trainer and others. The venerable Mr Powell also contributes his journalistic skills to Honeyball’s stable as well as doing, as he says, “plenty for Paul Nicholls” among others.

It seems he had been gently directed to these words by Matt and had even looked at half a dozen examples of them. We were colleagues for a few years at the Press Association at the end of the 1960’s before I got my marching orders from Bernard Jones, the editor, for some betting indiscretions, winding up at the Daily Telegraph after a troubling nine-month career hiatus.

Jonathan went ever onwards and upwards and, once or twice, asked me to step in when he was on holiday from the Sunday People which he graced for many years with his erudite columns.

On one occasion, I went into their sports room office and the sports editor said: “Hello Tony, sit over there in Fred’s seat.” I said: “Sorry, I’d rather not!”

Fred of course was their columnist, the great Freddie Trueman, bluff Yorkshireman, devilishly fast opening bowler for England and excused for his boorish excesses in behaviour because of his undoubted talent.

I’d been at an Essex – Yorkshire county cricket match in 1958, so maybe 15 years before Neville invited me to take Fred’s seat, at one of the possibly dozen local grounds that the nomadic Essex side used to drop into through every summer. I think this one was at Valentine’s Park, Ilford, and it rained all day. I remember half an hour before play was finally abandoned I saw Fred on the edge of the pavilion and took my life in my hands.

“Mr Trueman,” I began, summoning up what little courage I had then – it’s not altered much in the interim six and a half decades – “Could I please have your autograph?”  Mr Trueman, with a look of disdain, restricted himself to a curt “Fook off suun!” I sat somewhere else.

In Jonathan’s call he said he noted that I write all the time about half a century ago. This week I’m going to write solely about next week and if you think me unqualified, I am armed having gone, along with said Mr Bisogno, to a very small, select (and much delayed on the night) Cheltenham Preview gathering.

The delay was caused by the traffic problems of the star guest, Tom Scudamore, recently retired top jumps jockey. We reasoned, and rightly as it proved, someone with a measured and riding-oriented view of potential happenings at the first Cheltenham Festival he’d be missing as a jockey for the latter half of his 40 years would add plenty of value to proceedings.

His views were counter-point to the multiple ante-post framed opinions – and my word he does have plenty of each! – of Cheltenham Festival fanatic, Scott Ellis, who starts preparing for the following year on the Friday night the previous four days concludes, if not before.

You could line up Scott’s ante-post vouchers from one end of the Horse and Wig public house where we met to the little alley just up from Chancery Lane station in Holborn, and they would reach the door. Most of them seem to be favourites trained by Willie Mullins backed at 50/1 or 66/1 like Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle. I don’t bet ante-post.

The days when I had 100/1 Wayward Lad for three consecutive Gold Cups, taken after his first novice hurdle win for Tony Dickinson, but which had expired the year before he first ran in the big race, are long gone. When he did, by now trained by Tony’s son Michael, he never won it. He was of course one of the Famous Five, the first five home in the 1983 Gold Cup.

Wayward Lad was third, behind Bregawn and Captain John, owned by the remarkable Michael Mouskos, Greek Cypriot hotel owner in London’s West End, and ahead of Silver Buck, owned by William Haggas’ mum Christine Feather, and finally longshot Ashley House.

This speedy multiple King George hero didn’t really get up the hill at Cheltenham, famously succumbing three years later to the flying finish of the great Irish mare Dawn Run, only the second of her sex to win the race and unique in having already won a Champion Hurdle for Paddy Mullins, Willie’s father. But sorry Jonathan, I’m doing it again – pressing the history button. Small self-admonition!

Joining Tom on the Horse and Wig panel was Joe Hill, son and one-third partner in the Lawney/Alan Hill training triptych at Aston Rowant, much in the manner of Tony, wife Monica and son Michael Dickinson those four decades ago. The Hill yard, part Rules, larger part pointing and hunter chase- oriented, was described by panel chairman Charlie Methven as one of the leading pointing yards in the country. One of the yards also whose proprietors choose not to list its equine inmates in my annual gospel, Horses In Training, they are pretty much an unknown quantity for me.

Charlie, it turned out, was a colleague in my last few years at the Daily Telegraph around the turn of the century but in the sports room office perched on floor 14 in Canary Wharf, Docklands, while I was allowed to swan around at the racecourse from my at home in Hertfordshire – another lifetime ago!

Charlie is a bit of a mentor to young Joe, who I’d seen for the first time via my Racing TV screen 48 hours before. Charlie once bought a chunk of Sunderland F.C. and was a leading light at the admirable but short-lived Sportsman newspaper, conceived after the demise of another of Charlie’s former career stop-off points, the Sporting Life.

He is part entrepreneur, part informal village squire in the most expensive part of Oxfordshire and, on the evidence of Wednesday’s performance, something of a might-have-been matinee idol. But I digress – as is the common theme of this column. After the Hill yard supplied the 14/1 winner Hilnamix at Plumpton, Joe was interviewed, and he, too, looked the part. Hilnamix would have been the mount of Tom Scu but having ridden it all three times since it moved to the Hill yard, a new rider was needed. David Bass stepped it.

Adorned for the first time, on Scu’s advice, with a visor, it romped home only after “Bassy talked to Tom in the morning and got his instructions”, said young Mr Hill. The obvious question, with Tom free of any potential sanction for betting, was “How much did you have on, Tom?” The answer was predictable – “Not a penny!” Such is the normal fate of insiders in this always frustrating game.

Tom quickly settled into his stride, helped by the odd glass of wine as his driver of many years – a big lad! – watched on.

So here we go. Cheltenham 2023 and take my word for it, however good Willie Mullins’ State Man is, he won’t see which way Constitution Hill goes in the Champion Hurdle. That’s one 4/11 winner for you – don’t say you weren’t told!

The same opening day features the Supreme, where I take Barry Connell’s Marine Nationale to win at Facile Vega’s expense. Barry used to ride some of his own horses when Tony Mullins trained most of them and I remember having a bit of a touch on one when, in Brod Munro-Wilson style almost, he won a race at one of the non-Festival meetings there.

Jonbon got most of the panel votes in the Arkle to set up the Nicky Henderson Champion Hurdle spectacular, but it could be the turn of Willie and fast-going Dysart Dynamo. As ever it’s which of the Mullins squadron will win, not whether some will.

After the excesses of putting up three in one day – multiples being a dangerous tactic as I found to my cost on the day Punjabi won the 2009 Champion. That afternoon, resting home alone recovering from a detached retina operation, I fancied runners for my life through the card so linked the Ray Tooth hero at 33/1 in a full cover each-way multiple with the other five and none finished in the frame.

You would have thought I might have done a Lucky 63 where you get double the odds for a single winner to clear the win part of the bet at least, but no, just the Heinz sufficed: the £1 each way investment of £114 as a single would have raked in around four grand! Tom, I know how you feel.

We’re getting tight for space with all this talk of current events. Therefore, let’s just be content with Editeur Du Gite for Gary Moore in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and each-way on Klassical Dream (Mullins), if he gets there, in the Stayers for the Coleman family and Mark Smith.

Among a plethora of almost guaranteed Irish handicap winners, surely it’s time for an overdue Festival success for the Skeltons’ Langer Dan in either Wednesday’s Coral Cup or Friday’s Martin Pipe.

There you are Jonathan, hardly a mention of anything further away than last week at Plumpton. Who says I’m mired in the past?

- TS

Monday Musings: Distortion

/in /by

Much has been written and argued about concerning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s attempts to shortcut its way into top-level international sport, writes Tony Stafford. First golf, where millions of dollars were paid several years ago to a few selected stars to entice them into a tournament where, if winning, they would only have added a minimal amount to their guaranteed pot. The only requirement for them was to turn up and smile – all the way to the bank.

That has continued with their own lavishly endowed tour which has caused such a personal rift between those like Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter, who have broken away, and former friends Rory McIIroy and Tiger Woods, die-hard stalwarts of the existing PGA programme.

Then it was football – and, with the spotlight of the World Cup last autumn, their own footballers were on hand and even won a match – against champions Argentina no less! – to kick off their campaign before the competition eventually proved too hot. That their country’s football administrators could then manage to seduce Cristiano Ronaldo to abandon his lucrative Manchester United contract for one of infinitely greater instant wealth, even at the age of 38, to join their best domestic team, further emphasised their seriousness.

Horse racing has always been a focus for Saudi owners. Prince Khalid Abdullah, via his Juddmonte Farm breeding operation, had been a serious challenger in world racing both to the Maktoum family from Dubai and Coolmore for much of the past fifty years until his death in 2021.

Two decades earlier, two more Saudi Princes, the brothers Fahd and Ahmed Bin Salman, both had massive international strings. Fahd, the elder by a few years, won the Derby with Generous and, soon after, Ahmed, via the vehicle of his Thoroughbred Corporation, also won that Classic with Oath, as well as, in the US, four consecutive Triple Crown races, although bizarrely not managing to complete the Triple Crown itself.

I was fortunate to be involved with the TC throughout that entire period, and it was almost as much a shock to me as to the family and the country when both princes died in their 40’s, Ahmed a year after his brother. Their status in the country was immense, fittingly as sons of Prince Salman, now King Salman, who acceded to the country’s throne in 2015 and who remains its Head of State.

In those days, racing at their home track in Janadriya, and in the summer at Taif, where the temperature is much cooler than in the capital, was generally restricted to local owners. The horses raced around a very basic track, adjacent to which the smaller trainers and their owners would sit in the stables close to their horses for many hours and at leisure formulate their plans.

Then, as the decade of the 2010’s proceeded, news came of a big new racetrack, the King Abdulaziz Racecourse, in the same part of town. In 2020, the first running of the Saudi Cup was scheduled, a tactically astute four weeks before the Dubai World Cup at Meydan. Saudis regard the Maktoum-family emirate of Dubai, and the other Emirates for that matter, as Johnny Come Latelys and. while they are prosperous enough, the wealth in Saudi is, as was described to me when I first joined the TC, “a bottomless pit”. Funny how some phrases stay with you!

Consequently, the decision for Saudi Arabian horse racing massively to outbid and therefore upstage the Dubai World Cup and then get in ahead of it was probably only to be expected. Now on Saturday, the fourth running of the Saudi Cup, a 10-furlong race on the dirt, carried a total prize pool of £16 million and a first prize in excess of £8 million.

As with the golf and soccer, it was money no object and such distortion surely, one might think, must have the potential of causing a re-drawing of the world record for prizemoney for any horse in the history of the sport.

The leader up to Saturday morning was the wonderful Australian racemare Winx, on a final figure of £14,564,743 from 29 wins in 32 races for trainer Chris Waller until her retirement in 2019 for the breeding shed. She holds the record, from Bob Baffert’s Arrogate, winner of the Dubai World Cup for Prince Khalid. Japan’s Almond Eye, another great mare, is third, both horses having picked up more than £13 million.

Although the list I used does not include him, another of the world’s greatest money-accumulators was topically boosting his tally yesterday in Hong Kong. Preferred in the market on the Citi Hong Kong Gold Cup, the seven-year-old gelding Golden Sixty still recorded his 24th victory in 28 starts at Sha Tin, beating the 1-2 favourite, the two years younger Romantic Warrior, by a head. The 700-odd grand for this latest triumph actually puts him fourth on the overall list at £13,077,966.

It took Winx and Golden Sixty many years of endeavour to reach their massive cash accumulations. The Saudi riches will no doubt one day distort the record books, but despite Bob Baffert’s best efforts, it hasn’t happened yet.

On Saturday, Baffert brought a formidable double challenge to Riyadh. He supplied the Saudi Cup’s favourite in Taiba, a four-year-old with four wins back home in California, three at Grade 1 level. Despite having big-race specialist Mike Smith on board, Taiba could finish only ninth.

That was a long way behind the other Baffert runner, Country Grammer, now a six-year-old and runner-up in this race 12 months ago. It was a shock when he failed to beat locally trained Emblem Road last year but then, with Frankie Dettori drafted in, he collected the marginally (albeit almost £3 million) less Dubai World Cup a month later.

Dettori, as we know, is on his Let’s Get In As Much Cash As We Can In My Last Year’s Riding World TourTM and he stopped off for Christmas in California to win a Grade 2 on Country Grammer as the gelding’s prep for Saturday. Lo and behold though, the Frankie magic was in vain as the Japanese-trained Panthalassa, also a six-year-old, made every yard at 16/1 for trainer Yoshita Yahogi and rider Y Yoshida.

I spoke of distortion: If Country Grammer had picked up £8 million plus rather than a measly £2.91 million, he would have sailed a full £2 million past Winx. He can make up the deficit by winning the £5 million plus World Cup, so while it would be nice for Frankie to have another little payday to bolster his pension fund, let’s hope Winx can stay ahead of the pack for one more year at least.

There were several handsomely rewarded UK recipients of the Saudi largesse on the undercard. Unsurprisingly, they were headed by the Gosdens, winners of the second Saudi Cup with Mishriff, who as a result remains in the top ten money-earners narrowly ahead of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s great champion, Enable, whom John Gosden also trained. They picked up the £750k first prize in the Neon Turf Cup, Mostahdaf winning by seven lengths from Dubai Future, trained for Godolphin by Saeed bin Suroor.

While the Gosdens and Dettori are hardly unacquainted at picking up sackloads of lolly, one trainer more than happy to take just a small portion of the day’s rewards was Ian Williams.

He ran recent Dubai Carnival handicap scorer Enemy in the £1.25 million to the winner Longines Red Sea Turf Handicap over 1m7f. As his horse came to challenge under Richard Kingscote, for at least a furlong the trainer thought the unthinkable: “We’re going to win!”, but as in the big race later, the Japanese front-runner kept front running to the line and beyond.

Still, the consolation prize for second was a cool £440k for owners Tracey Bell and Caroline Lyons (from which Williams and Kingscote will both earn a nice percentage). Enemy has already been accepted for the Dubai Gold Cup on World Cup night and must be a prime contender, while the intended Melbourne Cup challenge, aborted when the horse lost his form last summer, may well be on. “We have to thank Ben Brain for that as he sorted out Enemy’s issues with his customary magic touch,” said Williams.

Waking up to reality yesterday, he was looking forward to watching his team Manchester United at the hotel in the Carabao Cup Final before going off to see that other spectacle, the big fight between Tommy Fury and Jake Paul, which is the preferred venue to end Saudi Cup weekend. Not much fun this racehorse training lark, is it Ian?

Less rewarding, sadly, was William Knight’s trip with his money-spinner Sir Busker, set up nicely with a run around Lingfield under big-race rider Ryan Moore, but after starting slowly in Mostahdaf’s race, never got in a blow. Most races on Saturday favoured horses away in the forefront and Sir Busker therefore had everything against him from the start. There will be other days for him, but few with the sort of money that might have been coming his way if things had gone to plan.

Monday Musings: Sheesh! He’s back…

/in /by

When Nicky Henderson sends one of his big guns to Cheltenham, something he’s been doing for 40-plus years, he and the racing world generally expects it to win, writes Tony Stafford. Racing expectations, though, are fickle; so, once one of those penalty kicks goes awry, often the reputation garnered through a steady pattern of achievement can be lost in a trice.

That was the case with Shishkin, until Saturday at Ascot anyway, when he restored his standing at a stroke. Going 2m5f for the first time under Rules – we forget he started as a winning Irish point-to-pointer, so we should hardly be shocked he stays – he demolished his rivals with a 16-length beating of Paul Nicholls’ front-running Pic D’Orhy.

The favourite and last year’s winner, Joseph O’Brien’s Fakir D’oudairies, was another seven lengths back in third after an uncharacteristically sluggish display.

In the manner of Sprinter Sacre and Altior, his Seven Barrows predecessors as champion two-mile chasers, Shishkin ran in the Supreme Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham, usually the place where Nicky as well as the general public finds out which of his theretofore hard to separate smart novices is the superior.

Even that yardstick is fallible. When Altior won the Supreme in 2016, stable-companion Buveur D’Air finished third, but Hendo insisted Altior went the chasing route and never again in a career of 18 more races, 15 wins, three second places, did he see a hurdle in public.

Fortunately for Henderson and new owner J P McManus, who bought him after the third at Cheltenham, Buveur D’Air didn’t impress in two runs over fences, and switched back to hurdles, winning the next two Champion Hurdles. At the time it left us speculating what had possessed Henderson to allow what was surely the best hurdler around to miss out on at least two Champion Hurdles.

He, though, and the owners of Altior and Buveur D’Air, were more than happy as his stable enjoyed the best of both worlds. Until injury and an unfortunate misstep intruded on Altior’s career, here was a two-mile chaser deserving of mention in the same breath as his illustrious predecessor, Sprinter Sacre.

He, too, had run in the Supreme, but in his case in 2011 he was only third and not even the best of the Seven Barrows horses, pipped for runner-up spot by Spirit Son in the Michael Buckley colours and, at 5/1 the preferred in the market with stable jockey Barry Geraghty aboard, following Paul Nicholls’ Al Ferof over the line.

Sprinter Sacre had led over the last hurdle but faded up the hill under Tony McCoy. He started 11/1 so the Henderson pair finished as the market, and presumably stable insiders, had predicted. Sprinter Sacre’s was an amazing career over fences, winning 14 of 18 starts even with a late-onset heart problem, from which the maestro and his staff nursed him back to win again at the highest level, making him one of the true legends of jump racing.

Michael Buckley, after a few quiet years, was involved in a much more recent Seven Barrows dual-pronged attack on the Supreme. Just 11 months ago, his Constitution Hill and J P McManus’ Jonbon were respectively 9/4 joint-favourite (with Willie Mullins’ Dysart Dynamo) and 5/1 third best, and filled the first two places.

There wasn’t a gap between them at the finish, though: it was more a gulf if that’s the correct terminology for 22 lengths. This time Nicky wasn’t messing around and Constitution Hill has been campaigned adroitly since, considering the problems caused to trainers in this most unpredictable of summer/autumn/winters.

He has been restricted to just two exhibitions, albeit Grade 1’s, where only Mullins at home in Ireland could have engineered a similar feat in his Cheltenham trials. Filling second place to Constitution Hill in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle and the Christmas Hurdle (at 12 and then 17 lengths’ distance) was Epatante, Champion Hurdle winner in 2020 before placing in Honeysuckle’s subsequent two victories in the race.

As for Jonbon, he’s off to the Arkle, the switch to fences delayed for a Grade 1 novice win at Aintree in April after which he has stretched his career tally to eight wins from nine with only Constitution Hill ever besting him.

He has always been odds-on and progressively heavier in each of his three runs over fences. If the latest at Warwick was a bit of a damp squib when he made hard work of beating a single opponent, he is still the 13/8 joint-favourite to follow Sprinter Sacre, Altior and Shishkin (and four others) to win the race for Seven Barrows.

That brings us nicely back to Shishkin, who following his Arkle triumph initially went on his merry way last season, getting the better of Ireland’s star second-season chaser Energumene in the Clarence House Chase at Ascot with a strong late rally to deny the Mullins front-runner.

Then came the denouement at Cheltenham, Shishkin never going, as Energumene exacted devastating revenge in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Shishkin’s return in the Tingle Creek in December at Sandown was another backward step, as he finished a tired third to Alan King’s Edwardstone. That put him briefly into centre stage until he in turn tarnished his gloss with a sub-standard Queen Mother warm-up over course and distance late last month.

The knives were out anticipating another Shishkin backward step on Saturday but, over half a mile further than he’d previously tried under Rules, he clearly found the more leisurely pace to his liking and the same finishing burst that had been the key to all his wins was even exaggerated by the trip.

Since the Festival last year, the spotlight has been so firmly aimed at Constitution Hill that Henderson has been allowed to take his time; and taking his time always means not listening to advice from “helpful” media, who never tire of trying to get trainers to allow a horse to run when they know it is the wrong thing.

Henderson has always regretted that he succumbed to the journalists’ clamour for Altior to take on Cyrname in a three-horse race over 2m5f at Ascot a few years back. That decision cost the horse his unbeaten chase record. Project to last November and there was no way he was going to allow Constitution Hill to run at that same meeting when he found on arrival at the track that the ground was unsuitably fast.

He made the right decision there, and now Shishkin is back, too. While he does have the Queen Mother option – he’s 10/1 for that - the two-and-half-mile Ryanair looks tailor-made and he’s the 5/4 favourite to stave off the always formidable challenge from across the Irish Sea.

With Constitution Hill, Shishkin and Jonbon for starters, and whatever else Nicky drums up, for once the home team will be going to war thinking a few races at least can help prevent an Irish slaughter in the Grade 1’s. That said, the multiplicity of dangers from over there in the handicaps remains a massive worry for the home team.

One jockey who will not be riding at his local and favourite course is Tom Scudamore who, after an unseat on Thursday at Leicester from a David Pipe 11/8 favourite, promptly announced his retirement.

Tom had quite a few rides for Raymond Tooth when he had jumpers and I always found him a joy to talk to with his ready smile. The worst thing about his retirement was when it was revealed he is 40; I still think of him and trainer brother Michael as in their early 20’s!

One day in the paddock somewhere I told him his dad Peter had only ever had two rides in my colours each at (non-Festival) Cheltenham and both were winners. “I know”, he said, adding: “the picture of one of them was in Mum and Dad’s toilet when we were growing up!”

ITV didn’t take long to sort him out on their coverage at the weekend and hopefully he’ll be in the team at next month’s Festival. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two brown envelopes come his way over the four days either!

Monday Musings: Nicholls Clunk and National Disaster?

/in /by

Last weekend we had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, writes Tony Stafford. In the proceeding Monday’s piece I referred to Willie Mullins’ win haul, speculating without adding that a million Euro plus would have been won. Overall, there was €2 million on offer.

UK trainers and their owners have become so defeatist about the annual annihilation at Cheltenham every March that the thought of challenging them on their home turf at Leopardstown five weeks before C-Day is anathema at best, the road to suicide at worst.

So, even with the riches on offer there, only two UK horses were dispatched across the water, one on each of the days. Nigel Twiston-Davies offered up Weveallbeencaught for the opening 2m6f Grade 1 novice hurdle.

A winner at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day, he started the 7-2 second favourite, just half a point longer than the Barry Connell-trained Good Land, but after making the running under son Sam, he stopped quickly and finished last of eight. In the subsequent veterinary inspection, he was found to have a skinned knee but otherwise no physical abnormalities.

Day two last Sunday also brought a single runner, the Alan King-trained and double-greens owned Sceau Royal, a 9-1 shot behind 4-1 on favourite Blue Lord in the same ownership. As expected, he couldn’t match the market leader, finishing almost four lengths in arrears, but the other Willie Mullins horse, Gentleman De Mee, did to the tune of seven lengths. Sceau Royal earned connections a handsome consolation €13,500 for his third place in a field of five to bring career earnings to a few quid short of £700k.

Over recent seasons, Paul Nicholls has been loath to travel across to Ireland, scene of so many major triumphs in the past, and he also seems very cautious about sending his best horses to Cheltenham in March. Instead, he favours saving some of the best for Aintree the following month where the invaders do not quite match the ferocity and numerically overwhelming strength of Cheltenham.

But, while an advocate of Aintree generally, his defeatism where the Irish hold sway is also shown with only one entry among 85 in the Grand National, run this year on April 15th. His lone candidate, Threeunderthrufive, was last seen finishing a well-beaten sixth in Warwick’s Classic Chase. More of the Grand National later.

The domestic trials days for Cheltenham in March are mainly at the same track at the end of January – a fixture which almost surreally survived the prevailing frost – and Saturday’s well-endowed card at Newbury.

Nicholls had his team primed for the latter, with nine runners on the seven-race Betfair Hurdle card. His sole entry in that tough handicap hurdle (which he had won with Zarkandar and Pic D’Orhy previously) was Rubard. He was a well-fancied 8-1 shot but, in finishing only tenth, was just one of a series of severe disappointments for the Ditcheat handler.

The Betfair Hurdle was won with determination by Aucunrisque, reverting to hurdling after some good runs in novice chases. He held off the plotted-up favourite Filey Bay, trained by Emmet Mullins and running in the McManus colours, by a hard-fought length. The Gary Moore pair Teddy Blue and Yorksea were a long way back close together in third and fourth but will have big race wins to come I’m sure.

Aucunrisque, well handled by Nick Scholfield, is trained by Chris Gordon, who was once a bit of a comic turn around the Southern jumps tracks and a magnet for the Sky Racing TV cameras and interviewers both before and after his runners performed. He is now anything but – a serious and highly successful trainer who knows how to win big races.

That was the only race in which Nicholls did not send out the favourite and he must have had an early hint that maybe things might not go to plan when McFabulous, 4-6 for the three-runner limited handicap chase which opened proceedings, was never travelling under Harry Cobden and was pulled up a long way from home as Coeur Serein won, Jonjo O’Neill junior for his father taking gleeful advantage. Unfortunately, McFabulous was found afterwards to have an irregular heartbeat.

Next up was Barbados Buck’s in the much-loved Andy Stewart colours, going off 7-2 best in a handicap hurdle. He ran well enough for second and that was the finishing position, too, for Hitman in the Denman Chase, but the Philip Hobbs 16-1 chance Zanza galloped all over him to the tune of seven lengths. This would hardly have encouraged hopes for the Ryanair.

If Hitman’s run was disappointing, Greenatean’s in the four-runner Game Spirit Chase must have been simply demoralising in the Nicholls yard. Rated 15lb superior to Venetia Williams’ Funambole Sivola (off levels), he couldn’t go with him on the run-in and even lost second place to the Tizzards’ Elixir Du Luxe, rated 25lb inferior and only getting 6lb here. The Queen Mother Champion Chase seems to be receding into the distance.

There was another second place from 7-4 favourite Holetown Boy, annihilated in the novice hurdle by a smart Gary Moore debutant, Love Is Golden, recruited from the Johnston stable. Big things can be expected from him.

They can also be anticipated by the winning trainer of the final race, Aslukgoes, who retained an unbeaten record when battling home under Jack Quinlan in the valuable Listed bumper. Nicholls ran two here, 9-4 jolly Meatloaf, who was fifth, and Fire Flyer, 4-1 in seventh. The total prizemoney on offer for the fixture was paltry – in relation to the Irish trials meeting’s riches – at £365k. Nicholls’ owners collected less than ten per cent of that, just over 30 grand.

The Bumper winner was just the second success of the fledgling training career of Ben Brookhouse, whose father Roger owns and bred the horse. I met Ben first when he was assistant to Ian Williams, but last summer he and his father’s horses moved into the yard Wiilie Musson owns in Newmarket. He has followed, among others since Willie retired, James Ferguson, now a Group 1 winning trainer.

Aslukgoes won twice for Williams in summer bumpers, but the style of this success suggests he can be a force for the Brookhouse duo going forward in good company over jumps, maybe stopping off for the Festival Bumper and the Mullins hoards first.

I gave a passing reference to it earlier and on the evidence of this year’s entry for the Grand National, most English, Welsh and Scottish-based trainers can do little more than that these days either.

No race has had a bigger turn-around in the relative fortunes of home and Irish trainers than this greatest of all steeplechases and the unbroken sequence of winning raiders through the past five years looks almost guaranteed to be extended.

Of 85 entries, only 31 are trained in the UK and no domestic trainer has more than two horses in the field, those twin-prongers being Dan Skelton, previous winner Venetia Williams, Joe Tizzard, Henry Daly and Sam Thomas.

Lucinda Russell was the last UK winner with One For Arthur in 2017, following Mouse Morris a year earlier, but the decade before that was bereft of Irish success. Following Gordon Elliott’s explosion onto the scene with the 2007 winner Silver Birch, I seem to recall before he’d even had an Irish winner in his name, David Pipe, Venetia Williams, Jonjo O’Neill, Donald McCain, Paul Nicholls, Sue Smith, Dr Richard Newland and Oliver Sherwood won in succession.

Now the pendulum has swung so violently to the West that in the 2022 race won so impressively by UK-owned but Irish-trained Noble Yeats, he led home six more Irish and only two home runners in the first nine. Santini, fourth for Polly Gundry then, is not entered this time, but Fiddlerontheroof, fifth, is involved again and has not been seen since disappointing in the Coral, late Ladbrokes, even later Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury last November.

Three-time winner Gordon Elliott, two with Tiger Roll, alone has 21 entries, Willie Mullins eight and the rest of the Irish the remaining 25.

But to my mind, as I’ve said before, eight-year-old Noble Yeats is the one to beat once more. His stamina is outstanding and while we must wait for him to run at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup first, the 10/1 available now looks a gift. Help yourselves!

- TS

Monday Musings: Mullins’ Marvels

/in /by

There was an eight-runner juvenile hurdle race at Leopardstown on Saturday, the opening race on what was expected to be a Willie Mullins obliteration of all other stables over the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, writes Tony Stafford. In the event, he collected eight of the well-endowed prizes on offer, six at Grade 1 level.

I made his horses’ earnings from the winners alone a total of €755K so, with a bunch of places on top, it would easily have topped a million, although it wasn’t always as planned, as you will read later.

Anyway, returning to Saturday’s opener, Willie’s 1-3 favourite Lossiemouth was expected to build on her easy December wins in a Grade 3 at Fairyhouse and a Grade 2 on this track, adding to a ten-length debut success at Auteuil back in April of last year.

No wonder the filly was the long-range favourite for next month’s JCB Triumph Hurdle and that status is unchanged at 13/8 even though she was beaten by two and a half lengths on Saturday. The main culprit was not the winner Gala Marceau, but rather the interference she suffered on the way round.

We marvel at the Mullins magic, but we should marvel more at the money he can manage to drum up from a host of big name owners ready to join the party. Of the eight in Saturday’s field, six were trained at Closutton in Co Carlow. All six were bought after running in France, none at a public auction.

One of those, perhaps inevitably, was Gala Marceau, the beneficiary of Lossiemouth’s travails but clearly decent in her own right. The most experienced in racing terms of the Mullins sextet, she raced four times on the flat as a 2yo in France, winning her final start by five lengths over 1m1f on heavy ground at Le Croise Laroche, the track that’s only a stone’s throw from Lille station, the intermediary stop of the Eurostar before Paris.

Switched to jumps she won both her hurdles, at Compiegne (€20k) and Auteuil (€30k), the latter by 11 lengths on April 30. The next sight of her was in Lossiemouth’s race on St Stephen’s (Boxing) Day when, receiving 3lb, she was a creditable runner-up although beaten seven-and-a-half lengths. She runs in the colours of Honeysuckle’s owner, Kenny Alexander.

Gala Marceau, unsurprisingly, is contesting second spot in the Triumph market. It’s easy to see the appeal for Mullins and Harold Kirk, his principal French racing talent spotter. Apart from the obvious ability, she’s by Galiway, the sire of Vauban, last year’s easy winner of the juvenile championship at Cheltenham for the Mullins stable and a far from disappointing third in yesterday’s Irish Champion Hurdle.

Lossiemouth had only needed a single run for the attention to be drawn to her and for Susannah Ricci’s colours to appear on her when she made that Fairyhouse debut as an eye-watering (with hindsight) 3-1 shot. It was understandable at the time as the 5-4 favourite Zarak The Brave, another import, and carrying the Munir-Souede double green livery, had already won a race by ten lengths since his transfer to Ireland.

Lossiemouth is a daughter of Great Pretender, sire of Mullins’ Benie Des Dieux as well as the Paul Nicholls pair Greanateen and P’tit Zig, so another desirable stallion for the top echelon of owners to salivate over.

Next home in third was Tekao, also a Mullins inmate, in his case a son of Doctor Dino, sire of State Man and Sharjah as well as French-trained Master Dino and Alan King’s doughty performer Sceau Royal. State Man had a big date yesterday. Tekao raced only once in France, in late April in a flat race over ten furlongs at Lyon Parilly, which he won by three and a half lengths, but basically so easily it could have been 33 and a half.

Transferred to Mullins, he started odds-on for his first two hurdles, finishing third of 22 to very useful Comfort Zone at Navan before opening his account in an 18-runner juvenile at Leopardstown’s Christmas fixture, getting the better of Ascertain.

In finishing third on Saturday, ten lengths behind Lossiemouth, he puts the merit of the first two in context and he was improving on the previous form, as Ascertain was now six lengths behind, four times as far as at Navan.

In fifth we had yet another Mullins horse, Gust Of Wind, who had been the subject of a recent ownership change. He was previously owned outright by Barnane Stud until last month following his sole prior start, on September 29, when he easily won a 21k newcomers’ race at Auteuil. He now runs in partnership with the Hollywood Syndicate. Their Il Etait Temps is clearly very smart, having won by ten lengths in a 15-runner novice at Thurles before running Facile Vega to four lengths at Leopardstown over Christmas and they were due to renew internal hostilities in the big novice hurdle yesterday.

Another by Great Pretender, Gust Of Wind started as the 8-1 third favourite on Saturday and clearly will be expected to win any ordinary maiden/novice that the master trainer wants to send him to next time.

Sixth, 28 lengths behind the winner, came the gelding Cinsa, also carrying notable livery, that of Sullivan Bloodstock. A son of little-known (to me, anyway) Tirwanako, he obviously was spotted running well enough, in fourth some way back in Lossiemouth’s Auteuil debut, to attract the attention of Mr Kirk. A 50-1 shot here, he probably finished where expected as was the case of the complete outsider, Jourdefete, the second Ricci runner.

He too had only a single run in France when 3rd of 10 at Vichy in early May. Miles behind Lossiemouth on his Irish debut, he was a similar distance back here, but don’t be shocked when he starts winning nice races when going into handicaps.

Six horses then, mostly seen and acquired last spring and the interesting thing for me is whether they are allocated by the trainer or whether there’s some sort of in-house negotiation before the  ownerships are settled.

Imagine the Riccis, JP, Andy Sullivan and Kenny Alexander bidding away closeted together in a room. Or even separately making sealed bids. Maybe the names simply go into a barrel and the lucky winner gets the horse. Then again, they are all more than lucky and successful enough in life to start with!

Mullins had won three races, all at the top level, on the opening day and added five more yesterday, but he will have been perplexed that his two shortest runners on the day, Blue Lord (1-4) for the Double Greens in the 2m5f Ladbrokes Dublin Chase and, more pertinently, the hitherto untouchable Facile Vega (4-9) in the novice hurdle, were both rolled over.

Naturally, the multiple back-up policy in the Grade 1’s, where hardly anyone else has a hope in face of such strength in depth, meant he still won each of the races.

Blue Lord was comfortably beaten by Gentleman de Mee, the Aintree novice chase conqueror of Edwardstone last April but just ticking over since, while Il Etait Temps wasn’t at all troubled to gain revenge over Facile Vega, but there’s clearly some sort of issue with that long-term banker for his novice hurdle target at Cheltenham.

All seemed serene as he went along at the head of the field In company with Joseph O’Brien-trained one-time Epsom Derby favourite High Definition. Then, at around halfway, High Definition made a mistake and J J Slevin, the trainer’s cousin, was unable to stay on board, leaving the favourite clear.

But in another case of family fortunes, Il Etait Temps challenged the leader around the bend and, once passed, Facile Vega compounded: “he stopped quickly” said Paul Townend. That left Willie Mullins’ nephew Danny to complete a day’s double initiated on Gentleman de Mee, and augmenting his shock winner on Saturday’s opener, all at the expense of Townend bankers.

Naturally, the concluding mares’ bumper, just a Grade 2 but always a pointer to Cheltenham, had a Mullins winner, Fun Fun Fun, allowed to start at 9/4 but a winner by almost ten lengths. Son Patrick shared the limelight here.

That followed two more Willie Mullins wins. State Man made all at the expense of a gallant Honeysuckle in the Irish Champion Hurdle, the mare just edging Vauban for second, so still creditable enough. State Man is clearly Ireland’s top hope of winning the Champion Hurdle, especially if Nicky Henderson forgets to declare Constitution Hill on the day.

We got our first sight of State Man in the UK at last year’s Cheltenham Festival when he started 13-8 favourite in a field of 26 for the County Hurdle and won smoothly. That was the prelude to four consecutive wins at the top level, climaxed by the easy defeat of the dual champion and national heroine yesterday.

State Man showed up over here with a rating of 141 after second place in a juvenile hurdle at Auteuil in May 2020, then after a 19-month absence, a fall in a maiden hurdle at Tramore and a bloodless romp at odds of 1/7 at Limerick.

That County Hurdle entry proved a nightmare scenario for the official and he must still be having palpitations, not just over him, but also another potential bloody nose at that fixture, which was only narrowly averted. He needed the help and courage of fellow Irish hurdler Brazil, once at Ballydoyle, who gave Gaelic Warrior 8lb and a short head beating in the juvenile handicap hurdle.

The handicapper had awarded Gaelic Warrior a figure of 129 and all he had to work with to arrive at it were three runs within just over six weeks at Auteuil the previous spring. He hadn’t won any of them, so when this season started Willie Mullins had a handy novice to go to work with.

Raised only 5lb for the Fred Winter Hurdle run, Gaelic Warrior won his maiden hurdle at rustic Tramore by 86 lengths and a conditions race at Clonmel by 15 lengths. When he appeared for his second handicap, supporting the Festina Lente Charity, and now off 143, itself highly charitable in the circumstances, it was no shock that in a 17-runner handicap, he started odds-on.

Needless to say he won, picking up the €88k prize with aplomb and completing a consolation double on the day for Paul Townend. He has entries in the two novice races next month and I doubt Mullins will favour the County Hurdle with what must be a new figure of at least 155, but we do like to bend over backwards for the invaders.

A Supreme success would catapult him alongside State Man for next year. In the meantime, when the weights for the handicaps come out, I will be scouring the lists, seeking out the least plausible Willie Mullins horse in anticipation of a small early wager, knowing it will start a short-priced favourite – as long as it’s the right one!

- TS

Monday Musings: Trials and Tribulations

/in /by

For all last week, owners, trainers and punters were hoping that Cheltenham’s richly endowed and numerically enhanced nine-race card would go ahead, writes Tony Stafford. It did, although it was a close-run thing as the weather only chose to relent the night before.

It might seem churlish to suggest it, but probably one or two trainers (maybe more), their horses’ owners and many of the racegoers that filled the stands, might in retrospect be wishing it hadn’t.

There was £605,000 to be carved up and the big guns were out in force, none bigger than Willie Mullins, who had been celebrating reaching 4,000 career wins earlier that weekend.

His Energumene, owned by Brighton FC chairman and fearless punter Tony Bloom, was expecting to sweep up another fat cheque for winning the Clarence House Chase. The Grade 1 event was added to the card after Ascot’s cancellation as the frost extended its second embrace of winter tentacles the previous Saturday.

With only five to beat and with the most obvious of them, Edwardstone, having bailed out early in his previous race when unseating Tom Cannon at Kempton, it seemed very unlikely that Energumene would not be enhancing his already formidable Rules record of 10-1-1 from a dozen career runs.

The 2022 Queen Mother Champion Chaser, beaten on debut in a bumper on his first run for Mullins in early November 2019, had since gone unscathed until his sole defeat over jumps in the corresponding race to Saturday’s, in its proper home at Ascot a year and a week earlier.

Energumene had led that four-horse affair from the outset but could not hold off the forensically timed challenge by Nico de Boinville on Shishkin. The biggest disappointment for me of the entire Cheltenham Festival 2022 was Shishkin’s apparently inexplicable failure to run his race as Energumene gained his revenge in style.

Shishkin, the favourite that day as he had been in all except one of his races before Ascot last year, simply didn’t go a yard, pulling up.

He has raced only once since, finishing a tired third to Edwardstone in the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown in early December and much has been made of his non-appearance in the list of entries for the Queen Mother Champion Chase this year, although a supplementary can be made if circumstances change.

Saturday’s market chose to forget Edwardstone’s subsequent lapse at Kempton, preferring to point to his Arkle (for novices) success at last year’s Cheltenham Festival. For most though, while this had the appearance of a match race even though half a dozen pitched up, it looked rather one-sided.

Now though the pair are inseparable in the market for this year’s Queen Mother at around 2/1 each. Which of them won on Saturday? Well, neither. In that eventuality, one or both must have failed to finish for one reason or another? No, both completed, Edwardstone coming to take the lead on the run-in and then being outstayed and headed close home while Energumene ran a listless race in third, six-and-a-half lengths behind.

What could possibly have beaten them? The spoiler of their private battle was Editeur Du Gite, a 14/1 shot trained by Gary Moore, that had been supplemented for the race following his taking advantage of Edwardstone’s exit to win the Desert Orchid Chase and £57k on the second day of Kempton’s Christmas meeting.

There, he set off ahead under non-claiming 3lb claimer Niall Houlihan, and with everyone expecting him to come back, he kept stretching the lead in that Grade 2 contest, winning by 13 lengths from the Skeltons’ Nube Negra.

Grade 2 races are one thing; Grade 1’s against a Willie Mullins champion are quite another. When Houlihan again stepped away in front on Saturday – in a way stealing Energumene’s frequent thunder - again nobody took much notice.

The lead wasn’t too excessive as they came down the hill with the race heating up and the main contenders still in touch, but suddenly the favourite wasn’t moving like a winner. The same wasn’t true though of Edwardstone, and after they jumped the last with the Alan King horse in full flow, the outcome seemed to be a 1.01 Betfair certainty.

Edwardstone duly went past his rival after the last fence, but could not shake him off and Editeur Du Gite battled back to get up close home with his rider never resorting to the whip. Editeur Du Gite has now won six of his 16 chases, three of them around Cheltenham in five attempts. He’s down to 5/1 for the big race, but the market may have over-reacted to that one run.

Alan King seemed happy enough at the outcome and even Mullins was sanguine, but then you can afford to be when you’ve already trained 4,000 winners. Even Mark Johnston can only point to a hundred or so more than 5,000!

The next setback for two more big fancies for the Cheltenham Festival came in the three-mile Cotswold Chase when Dan Skelton’s Protektorat, so upwardly mobile over the past year, and the 2022 Grand National winner Noble Yeats, were expected to dominate.

Instead, it was a pair of Northern chasers prepared by female trainers that took the first two places. For much of the race Ahoy Senor was prominent along with the ever-popular Frodon and Bryony Frost, but then in mid-race he seemed to lose interest and dropped into midfield.

As he marked time, the Ruth Jefferson eight-year-old Sounds Russian swept round on the outside and went for home. Protektorat still looked an obvious threat in second coming down the hill but Noble Yeats had looked sluggish all the way round and was still some way back. Protektorat coud only go on from there at one pace and, as they turned for home, Ahoy Senor and Derek Fox rallied and went on to a hard-fought success. Sounds Russian was a creditable runner-up while Noble Yeats motored up the hill to get within a length of the second at the line.

Emmet Mullins and the Waley-Cohen family, trainer and owners of the Grand National hero will hope when he comes back to Cheltenham in March, they will go a better gallop and there will be more of them – mostly from Ireland no doubt – to make it a truer test. My preference for a bet on him, even though he will have a massive weight, is in the Grand National. Only an eight-year-old, I believe he’s a clone of Red Rum and Tiger Roll and could win at least three of them.

Okay, a couple of short ones had been turned over, but surely now the punters could look forward to the Cleeve Hurdle and a fourth successive victory in the three-mile test for the wonderful Paisley Park. Now an 11-year-old, Andrew Gemmell’s star was still sprightly enough to win the Long Walk Hurdle, another major jumps race salvaged from Ascot, this at Kempton on Boxing Day.

The received wisdom is that Kempton is an easy track and one where you would not expect Paisley Park’s stamina to be as effective as elsewhere, but as the others died at Kempton, he just kept galloping and won easily.

Now on a track he does clearly enjoy, with a Stayers’ Hurdle to go with his trio of Cleeve’s, surely he would make it four. In Dashel Drasher, he had an inveterate pacemaker to ensure a good gallop and that 10-year-old was joined in his role by the upgraded handicapper Botox Has.

As they grouped up going down the hill, Paisley Park was in touch having raced more fluently than usual in the early stages of the race, but Dashel Drasher, showing plenty of dash, quickly looked to have them cooked. And then came an unexpected challenger and not Paisley Park. It was French six-year-old, Gold Tweet, equally adept at hurdles and chases in France, but never yet over three miles, who sprinted up the hill under Johnny Charron to give Gabriel Leenders an unexpected training success at 14/1.

Charron was having his first ride in the UK, but he is a star turn in France where he won the Grand Steeple Chase in 2022. Leenders says he may now be tempted to get the owners to supplement Gold Tweet for the Stayers’ Hurdle but said: “It’s expensive and we’re not rich,” seeming to forget that Saturday’s race carried a first prize of almost £40,000 and owners, trainer and jockey will cop most of that.

It’s nice that sometimes, pre-conceived ideas are confounded. We too easily take the established order as permanent. In racing it is permanent, until they go to post again and as all punters know, any horse can be beaten and at the same time massive-priced animals can win, especially in 2023!  What a refreshing day to see a few fresh faces picking up the big pots!

- TS

Monday Musings: Frustration Abounds

/in /by

One week nearer Armageddon, or as UK trainers have come to call it, the Cheltenham Festival, and those trainers have just endured another week without any NH racing, writes Tony Stafford. Hereford last Monday went ahead and now Ffos Las on Monday looks hopeful, but with only 50 days to go, spirits in those jumping yards could hardly be at a lower ebb.

Take Gary Moore. Situated due south of London, between Brighton and slightly further Lingfield, he was looking forward to gorging himself on the fabulous riches made available in the second Winter Million extravaganza offered by the often-maligned Arena Racing Group at Lingfield.

The first and third days, last Friday and this Sunday, interspersed with a flat card on the Saturday, which did go ahead as planned, were to provide a string of valuable races and Moore had fancied runners in most of them.

The Friday abandonment as frost gripped the country for the whole week, stretched the Sunday card to nine races. It offered obvious chances for fast-improving Haddex Des Obeaux, a scintillating winner at Doncaster last time out; emerging long-distance handicap chaser Movethechains; and stable favourite Goshen, who seems to have found his true metier as a three-mile hurdler.

Moore had made his frustrations known after the first long frozen spell in the south and southeast, that one accompanied by a heavy one-shot snowfall that refused to go away. Trainers had already endured the hottest (and driest) summer on record making working on grass gallops almost redundant for much of the year, even in places as well-endowed with them (and permanent staff to maintain them) as Newmarket.

Then, when the ground on the tracks started to become acceptable to even the most ground-dependent jumpers, along came Mr Frost to halt their progress.

So here we are with only 50 days to the Festival, and Moore and also Kim Bailey, who was denied a run both at Ascot on Saturday in the Clarence House Chase and Sunday at Lingfield with Two For Gold will now be looking to Cheltenham next Saturday. The Clarence House has been added to the card to make it another nine-race programme. Hopefully it will enjoy better luck with the weather than Lingfield, and Kim has also described the season so far as “brutal”.

Also added to the normal run of January fare at Prestbury Park is the Glenfarclas Cross-Country Handicap Chase, expunged from its normal December slot owing to the aftermath of the dry summer, but now apparently all – or most! – is well.

The BHA forecast going for the Cross-Country course on Sunday morning was good to soft, soft in places, frozen in places. The BBC Weather forecast for Cheltenham this week promises minus 4 for Monday night, plus 1 for Tuesday and plus 2 for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

It cannot be a certainty that all the frozen bits will have been expunged by Saturday morning, especially with an 11.40 a.m. start for the Triumph Hurdle Trial, with day-time temperatures not expected to be higher than plus 7 at any time this week. We do have, though, around 105 minutes’ extra daylight now compared with the shortest day just over five weeks ago to help the thawing process.

Of course, mention of the Triumph Trial reminds me of that day in 1986 when Tangognat won the corresponding race in my (now David  Armstrong’s) colours, though he got well stuffed in the Triumph itself. It was some (not much) consolation that Brunico, which I originally bought in a package deal from Malcolm Parrish, and had a share in when he won on debut at Windsor for Rod Simpson, was a fast-finishing second for Terry Ramsden to 50/1 shot Solar Cloud, ridden by Tangognat’s twice successful rider Peter Scudamore, now claimed by David ‘the Duke’ Nicholson.

Talking of Rod and Terry, a few weeks back I was chatting to my seafood business-owning friend Kevin Howard, who said one of his regular customers, Denis Rankoff (apologies Denis if Kev got the name wrong!), had been an owner with Simpson “ages ago” and Kevin thought I might be interested in meeting him.

A couple of weeks ago, I called in for some jellied eels and on a very quiet Sunday there was just one other (and also venerable) gentleman there and it turned out to be the said Mr Rankoff. He told me he had been more involved with greyhounds, preferring to be, as he termed it, a “big fish in a small pond” rather than be consumed in the ocean of horse racing, so he didn’t stay long in the business and wasn’t much interested in it either.

“I had a couple of nice wins but when you added it all up, the losers more than outweighed the winners, so I sold my horse and that was that”, said Rankoff..

Of all the horses, the one that won him his money later had a rather big involvement with me, Terry Ramsden and David Wintle, to whom we moved him on, purchasing him out of the Simpson yard. At the time Wilf Storey was making hay with another horse from the Parrish consignment, Santopadre, exiled from Rod with the instruction: “shoot him”, a comment also reserved for Seram, the companion in the box from Lambourn to Co Durham the same day.

The Simpson exhortation did come to pass for poor Seram who almost got Chris Grant killed first day on the gallop when aiming straight for another horse, but Santopadre was actually very talented, winning three in a row, each time carrying plenty of Ramsden money. And, after the third win, by 15 lengths with a double penalty at Wetherby (for two seller/claimer wins), his blue and white colours too. He finished a close fifth in that same Triumph Hurdle, not lasting up the hill as well as the better stayers in a fast-run race.

As I said, Wilf had been winning races with Santopadre, and Fiefdom, and the bookmakers were beginning to panic at the prospect of another Storey gamble, so a plot was hatched. Ramsden bought Topsoil and switched him to David Wintle while we suggested to Wilf that he might want to buy something very moderate but enter him for the same race as Topsoil, and somehow convince the bookies this “secret” horse was the “buzzer”.

He found one from Bob Johnson, Kenny’s father, and the race was also identified, on January 3, 1986, a selling hurdle at Haydock Park. On the strength of his recent winners, Wilf opened an account with one of the major firms with a substantial limit and 45 minutes before the race, fortuitously the first on the card, marched down to the rails and put the whole lot on his horse Darwina.

We had looked closely at the race beforehand and could see only one possible danger, a John Jenkins horse, so Terry’s plan was a big win bet and a forecast. As the time of the race approached, Topsoil and the Jenkins runner were close in the market with Darwina just a shade longer, the firmness encouraged by the fact that Peter Scudamore was booked. He’d ridden Tangognat to success in the New Year’s Day 4yo hurdle at Cheltenham just two days earlier.

The race went pretty much to script. In those days you couldn’t watch, so on the phone we heard as Topsoil got the better of his obvious rival by three-parts of a length with 25 lengths back to the third and Darwina pulled up before halfway. Peter smiled when in the paddock he was told, “you get paid, win or lose!” Darwina was given back to Bob Johnson straight after and Terry, presumably expecting an easier win, asked: “What went wrong?” He expected certainties to win like one!

Back to this weekend, Cheltenham offers a total of £605k for its nine races which also include a £100,000 Paddy Power-backed handicap chase over 2m4f and the three-mile Cleeve Hurdle with 70 grand in the offing. The Triumph Trial, like the big race itself, after many years still supported by JCB, is worth £80k.

Doncaster also are scheduled for Saturday and there’s another £263,000 to be divvied up there. These are the days trainers and owners of good horses need to have to shoot at. Meanwhile, the Irish usually fare much better on the weather front and of course their prizemoney, even for the most mundane card, puts ours to shame, but that’s another story entirely.

  • TS

 

Further to my article last week concerning the death of my friend Roger Hales, his funeral will be at Gorleston (near Great Yarmouth) Crematorium at 11.30 a.m. on Monday, February 20.

Monday Musings: Remembering “Ginger” Roger

/in /by

I suppose it will be happening ever more regularly now, writes Tony Stafford. The phone rings and someone says: “Did you know so-and-so died?”

Roger Hales, a great friend of racing, lost to us last week

Roger Hales, a great friend of racing, lost to us last week

Until the call last Tuesday I didn’t know Roger died, and it was only when I did that I realised I hadn’t been getting since before Christmas the almost daily call of “Fancy anything today? I’m just calling to see if you are all right.” Or rather, “all roit”.

Considering he was a year older than me and that from his days as a teenager down the mines near to his Nuneaton home, his breathing was always difficult, he got around walking many fast miles every day until very recently.

The breathing problems became even more difficult in later years when visits to doctors’ medical centres, and even brief stays in hospital to get some much-needed oxygen, characterised his time in his new life in Great Yarmouth, which he enjoyed to distraction especially when he moved within a few hundred yards of the track.

Roger “Ginger” Hales had been a fixture on the country’s Midlands racecourses from the time his father, who ran a betting business in the town, first introduced him to some of the characters of his own life experience.

Occasionally jockeys would come to see Hales senior and, while he did tell me a couple of names and the services for which they would be paid, I think it unfair to besmirch their memory.

I am much less reluctant to relate an anecdote which he loved to tell, about his family’s next-door neighbour, a certain Billy Breen. He was a celebrity in the Nuneaton of the 1960’s when, in common with many people in those days, their telephone was on a party line with next door.

When Billy, stage name Larry Grayson of “shut that door” fame, noticed Roger’s mum had picked up her receiver while he was already talking, he would proceed shamelessly to “camp up” the conversation. “She loved it,” said Roger. “Billy was the nicest man. We were all delighted with his great success on TV.”

Part of the family routine in those days was that they would all decamp every late summer for the big September meeting at Great Yarmouth, where dad would have a pitch at the races and Roger would help while his mother and sisters enjoyed the full holiday experience.

Then there were years training greyhounds to win races all around the country. “One top trainer used to pump them full of steroids,” he recalled. “I got hold of a few of them from him and it took at least six months to get it out of their system, just walking them and giving them proper natural food. Then we would take them flapping (unlicensed racing) and often pull off a gamble!”

Later in life – and this is when I first met him, around 20 years ago - he was running a company making metal garden items, such as hanging baskets. He walked up to me, unannounced, at Yarmouth, introducing himself. He told me how he ran a company employing many staff but that it was going bust as major firms took so long paying their bills for the products they bought.

Within a couple of years, he had left his family, moving permanently, alone, to Yarmouth where he soon became a very popular figure around the town. A few times when I visited for a race meeting and was able to be there for a couple of hours beforehand, we would walk through the market and be stopped every few yards. No mean feat for an outsider!

But the connection with racing continued well into his 70’s and he could often be seen either helping a trainer at the races or driving a horsebox from one end of the country to another. Noel Quinlan was one of those he knew best.

Noel said: “He would do anything for you – even drive down from Yarmouth to Newmarket to muck out or drive a box. Then when he returned the box he would wash it out and leave it much cleaner than when he collected it. He was about the same age as my late brother Michael and he was so sad, as we all were, when he died.”

Roger used to love to come and watch Raymond Tooth’s horses run as we got to know each other better. I needed to be there and often when there was a long trip north, he would insist on driving, usually meeting near Huntingdon. He had been a long-distance lorry driver and had a licence which allowed him to drive larger horseboxes.

One tale involving a much smaller vehicle, a two-hander which needed to be collected in Newmarket; transferred up to Richmond in North Yorkshire where he was to pick up a filly and then on to Wilf Storey in Co. Durham to drop her off, was not without incident.

It soon became obvious to him as he left Richmond and the filly (a two-year-old) settled in, that the partition was faulty, and she was falling into the middle all the time. She had a bumpy ride, poor thing. Then after delivering her safely, making sure to avail himself of Brenda Storey’s legendary Victoria Sponge cake <I always used to bring one back from there!> on his way out of Wilf’s yard, he banged into one of the guarding posts at the entrance, doing a fair bit of damage to the vehicle, less so the stone. I expect it took a degree of soft soap to sweet talk the box-owner and allay his irritation.

Back in 2011, several years earlier than the box incident, we got into a great routine. It was at the time of French Fifteen’s brilliant two-year-old career with Nicolas Clement. After he won his first race near the German border, which we missed, Clement found him three more successive winning opportunities.

Roger would drive down from Great Yarmouth to Hackney Wick, pick me up and drive via a very late Eurotunnel train to the West of France from Calais, usually arriving early in the morning.

We went in July to Chateaubriant, August to Le Lion d’Angers, and in early September to Craon. On  the last-named trip French Fifteen won a very good Listed race at the expense of the favourite, trained by Jean-Claude Rouget, who used to expect to win the race every year.

To say Roger enjoyed the day is an under-statement as after the race he was invited to join us on the podium and conversed for a few minutes with a senior administrator who happened to be one of the Baron Rothschilds. “I was speaking to a Rothschild!”, he kept reminding me, all the way home.

The colt’s next race was a Group 3 at Saint-Cloud, and that was the one time Raymond could attend; so he, Steve Gilbey and me, travelled by Eurostar for his only other defeat as a juvenile apart from his debut, finishing an okay second, but losing just the same.

There were misgivings (both from owner and trainer) about whether he should run in the Criterium International (Group 1) back then, but in the end we bit the bullet; though it was to be me and Roger again. As usual, it was an early pick-up so, knowing his penchant for promptness, I called at 5 a.m. asking: “Are you in the car park?” He replied that, no, he was stuck on the side of the M11 with a broken-down car and a phone with no credit.

Having organised a pick-up to take him and his vehicle back home, I set off to drive to Paris. When FF won in great style, I couldn’t partake of the free-flowing champagne but a one-time (and not especially favourite) divorce client of the boss, John Livock, certainly did enjoy the refreshments. By the time I set off back home for Chelsea and Ray’s house to deliver the massive trophy, I was almost convinced that Livock and not Tooth was the owner!

Within a week, French Fifteen was sold to a member of the Qatar Ruling family. He came to the 2,000 Guineas the following spring and got within a neck of Camelot in a desperate finish. Roger always remembered bumping into Nicolas Clement before the race and having a great chat. As he turned back to us before going in, he said: “What a gentleman, he gave me two owners’ badges.”

Everyone who knew Roger regarded him as a gentleman. His Yarmouth friends Richie Farnese, Gary Holmes, who called me with the awful news, and Malcolm “Murphy” Alexander recalled countless instances of helping infirm older relatives and how he would volunteer at the medical centres when anyone needed to get to hospital.

His friend Vicky Coleman, who he referred to whenever they bumped into anyone as “my babs” has a similar story. Her grandmother was ill with cancer a few years back and Roger “used to take granny everywhere when he still had a car. He was the same with my mum Maureen and my two girls.”

When Covid struck, coincidentally his health deteriorated, Vicky believing his not being able to drive being the major reason rather than the virus. I remember at the time when nobody was supposed to go out, but the buses were still running, he would call and say: “I’m in Norwich” or “I’ve come to Peterborough”. He would say: “No-one’s about, but I managed to get a cup of tea and then I’ll be coming back and probably be the only person on the bus.”

Nobody got better value from their Seniors Bus Pass, or as he would laugh at his frequent later trips to his various medical appointments, “Or the NHS!”

I hate funerals but once this lovely man’s time to be laid to rest is settled, I will move heaven and earth to be there.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Glut of Shocks

/in /by

Have you noticed, there seems to have been an astonishing number of long-priced winners of late? Lack of energy has restricted my analysis to a few days from the middle to the end of last week, with starting and finishing points designed to give the most biased slant to prove the argument, writes Tony Stafford.

Thus, I’ll kick off on Wednesday at Hereford when there were four winning favourites but 14/1 and 12/1 scorers. In the evening at Kempton, one winning favourite emerged alongside 25/1 and 10/1 winners with vanquished 8/11 and even-money shots, but the statistician’s delight came at Newcastle at the beginning of the afternoon.

Within half an hour, after the two opening races went to the market leaders, David Griffiths, no stranger to long-priced success, stepped in with 125/1 shot Endofastorm – my mate, Wilf Storey, sent out that 3/1 favourite Going Underground – unfortunately he did.

Half an hour later it was the turn of Keith Dalgleish. His four-year-old gelding Notimeforanother must rank as one of the all-time inappropriately named winners, so soon after the Griffiths filly and in his case just the 100/1.

But there are 100/1 shots and 100/1 shots and this one should never have started anything like that. Indeed, if certain members of the tipping/punter profession had looked carefully at the race, they would have come away with the value bet of all-time. They say you can’t eat value, but this one instance of it was a tasty dish indeed.

The decoy was his run the previous week over the straight one mile, ridden by the same jockey, Billy Garritty. Starting slowly, he trailed the field throughout and was beaten 33 lengths into last place. His rider reported he was never travelling.

He travelled all right on Wednesday, in midfield until nudged along by Garrity two out. He joined the Alice Haynes-trained even-money favourite, Regal Rambler, 110 yards out and beat him by a neck.

That was his fourth racecourse appearance, the second coming in an Aintree bumper where after showing initial promise at Market Rasen, he was the 11/2 third favourite but finished 33 lengths behind the winner.

Hanging under Jamie Moore in the closing stages, he appeared a likely non-stayer, at least at 2m1f on soft ground. The Market Rasen race was over 13.5 furlongs and he had started the 2/1 favourite and finished a good runner-up to the Don Cantillon-trained winner. I’ll keep you in suspense for a little longer as to that horse’s identity.

The previous October, Poetic Music had won the same Market Rasen race on debut for John Butler. She was sold to a new client of Fergal O’Brien’s for 60 grand at Cheltenham soon after and went on to win two more bumpers, including the New Year’s Day one at Cheltenham before finishing sixth to Facile Vega in the Festival Bumper at Cheltenham. She won first time over hurdles before being beaten by the smart Nicky Henderson filly Luccia in a Listed hurdle at Newbury.

The winner of the same 2022 Market Rasen juvenile bumper cost two and a half times as much to winkle away from the shrewd Mr Cantillon, the £150k being paid at that Cheltenham auction by a patron of Ben Pauling’s. Three days before Notimeforanother won at those incredible odds, the Pauling juvenile followed Poetic Music’s example by winning the New Year’s Day bumper at Cheltenham. Fiercely Proud, for that’s his name, could be very smart and no wonder Notimeforanother could win a low-grade 4yo and up novice race for the equally sharp Mr Dalgleish!

Moving on from Wednesday, Thursday at Chelmsford featured 40/1 and 22/1 scorers with no winning favourite and, while Ffos Las was a more even battleground, there were still 16/1 and 12/1 winners in West Wales. As for Wolverhampton, while four favourites did oblige, Clive Cox’s 1/9 shot Captain Pep, in the Middleham Park colours, never looked like pegging back a Tony Carroll front-runner which checked in at 16’s by two comfortable lengths.

Friday was more level pegging, but in less than half an hour on Saturday there were three notable reverses for lovers of short-priced favourites at Sandown, Wincanton and Cork. A safe haven for backers when times are tough is usually the Willie Mullins stable and with 24 winners in the past fortnight, there must have been room for some profit.

But it has taken him 98 runners over the busy Christmas/New Year period to amass those victories (including three yesterday, two long odds-on, at Naas) and 38 of the runners started favourite. One of those to be over-turned was the 1/4 shot Alastar in the opening maiden at Cork on Saturday.

This son of Helmet had smart form in France and Italy as a three-year-old but had not raced since November 2021 when unplaced in a Group 2 race in Italy. Bought for €150k that autumn, he was gelded early last year. So many of the international Mullins/Howard Kirk buys have lengthy preparation times before arriving on Irish racecourses, with everyone fully expecting the formality of a win. It’s usually the longer the gap the more certain it becomes and 4/1 on about him was hardly a shock.

What was surprising was that the Denis Hogan-trained jumps debutant four-year-old Action Motion, a 12-times raced 65-rated non-winner on the flat, could get the better of the 98 RPR-rated gelding by half a length at 20/1.

Two more short-priced reverses immediately preceded the Cork boil-over. First the Gary Moore French import, Bo Zenith, winner of his only previous start in Auteuil, started 4/11 for his UK debut at Sandown but in the rain-softened ground, he faded up the hill behind the Nigel Hawke-trained I Have A Voice, trailing home 27 lengths back in third. Third favourite at 17/2, this sound stayer looks to have a future and could be a candidate for the Boodles Juvenile Hurdle.

Between these two obliterations, the defeat of a 4/6 shot at Wincanton might seem small beer. Kim Bailey had expected his Top Target to follow his previous success at Wetherby, but after racing prominently, he had no answer to the finishing burst of the 50/1 Joe Tizzard contender I Shut That Door who simply sailed past on the run-in to win by more than two lengths.

Bailey was interviewed on Sky Sports Racing after his front-running chaser Moonlighter battled on gallantly to win at Chepstow yesterday and he bemoaned the season that he and his trainer counterparts have been enduring, not least the implications it has had in hindering the preparation of some of his better horses for Cheltenham, which looms barely nine weeks away.

The seemingly never-ending dry summer and then the very cold weather which wiped out jump racing for a week before Christmas have severely restricted most of his horses in how often he could run them. Those trainers who pressed on regardless often were taking risks and for those who haven’t, now realistically there can only be time for one or at a pinch two prep runs if conditions stay suitable from now on.

Mullins though is so powerful that he will again be approaching the Festival with a guaranteed clutch of favourites. Facile Vega, State Man and Dysart Dynamo all strutted their stuff with aplomb in the period in question (not that State Man will be favourite if as expected he takes on Constitution Hill!) and even if six odds-on shots from Wille bit the dust, the punters will not be dissuaded from seizing what they have come to regard as their annual spring piggy bank.

As to Bailey, 28 years on from his amazing Champion Hurdle (Alderbrook) and Gold Cup (Master Oats) double, he still retains all the enthusiasm and skill, now operating from his nicely-developing yard at Andoversford, a few miles outside Cheltenham. Those big wins came five years after his Grand National success with Mr Frisk.

There’s no doubt that with so many promising unexposed types in his care, the belief persists that a second win in one of jump racing’s Big Three could still await him as he enters the later phase of his glorious career.

Having been around for the entirety of that time, I have to say, I can never remember so many massively-priced winners, even a few for him. I believe it’s a function of Betfair’s domination of the betting market coupled with the weakness on-course and the effects of affordability checks.  Maybe the Editor, who was formerly chairman of the Horse Race Bettors Forum, could spell it out for me and you all!

 - TS

[I don’t know, really, though I suspect it’s most likely to be a combination of moderate racing and the uneven distribution of overround – where the top of the market offers tighter prices and the tail fatter odds – since the move to industry SP’s. That, of course, might be hogwash – Ed.]

Meeting Charlie Johnston

/in /by

The most predictable thing about Mark Johnston is his unpredictability, writes Tony Stafford. When most Scotsmen would be thinking of First Footing on New Year’s Eve, his mind was set on Last Running as he let it be known publicly that his entries in conjunction with son Charlie at Wolverhampton on that Friday evening would be his last.

That left Charlie Johnston, 32, as the sole licence holder at Middleham’s Kingsley House Stables. That long-standing name nowadays more importantly incorporates the magnificent Kingsley Park with its independent gallops less than a mile from the High Street.

Middleham has a wide range of excellent existing work facilities available to the other trainers in the area, which Johnston used for the longest part of his 34 years in the town. But with the stable size swelling beyond 200 horses, it became clear there was a need to ensure continuity of exercise every day. As anyone who knows Newmarket will tell you, delays of getting onto the gallops if stuck in behind a big string can be frustrating for trainers and cause difficulties for horses with the potential for over-excitement.

Thus Kingsley Park was designed, and is organised in eight self-contained stable blocks, all with access to the most up-to-date swimming pools, water treadmills, and with the veterinary and farriery expertise needed to keep the massive show on the road. They are all within yards from stepping on to the various gallops, be they grass or artificial. Each yard has its own manager, reporting directly to the management team and several assistant trainers, the best-known being the admirable Jack Bennett.

Since qualifying as a vet, Charlie has been increasingly involved in the family business and he, his father, and mum Deirdre form the Board of Directors. It was at their quarterly Board Meeting on December 1st that the suggestion of a more immediate change-over was first mooted. Let Charlie explain.

“When we first applied to the BHA for the joint-licence, which began on January 1st last year, we all had it in our minds that it would probably be something which would continue for four or five years as a partnership. It quickly came down to more like two years as the transition had gone smoothly from the outset.

“Then at the last Board Meeting, Dad said: “What about January 1st?” We looked at each other and everyone seemed to like the idea. It had the obvious benefit of making for a tidy transition.”

The first step was to check with the BHA that it could be arranged in time. Then the owners had to be consulted. Charlie said: “As of January 3rd, none of the owners has disagreed with the new arrangement. Of course, Dad will be here every day as usual and all the planning processes that have been in place for decades to decide what and where we run will continue unchanged.

“Mum will, as ever, be riding out her two lots on racehorses every morning, then go across to look after her eventers. She will also continue travelling the country and the world watching eventers she has with other people. The only thing really that will change in the short term is that, when they go on holiday, the phone won’t be ringing non-stop.”

After initially training in Lincolnshire, Mark and Deirdre Johnston moved to Middleham in 1988 buying Kingsley House which, at one time a decade or so earlier, had a less reputable incumbent in Ken ("Window") Payne, the one-time selling-plate king who I knew originally in the days when he trained in the New Forest.

One of his most famous episodes at that time was when he saddled two horses in a four-runner seller, putting his own apprentice John Curant on the “trier” and Lester Piggott on the wrong one. They were the right one (for Ken) and the wrong one (for the betting public) as, Big Jake I seem to remember, strolled home from Mr Bojangles and the Long Fellow.

It was while at Middleham that Payne took charge of a syndicate horse I organised with fellow Daily Telegraph journalists and habituees of Coral’s betting shop in Fleet Street. These included, bizarrely, two punting band leaders in Mike Allen and Trevor Halling – father of boxing commentator, Nick Halling.

Halling senior incidentally got such a kick from that connection that he made a new career in racing journalism in the south-east and was a long-standing regular at Lingfield and all the Sussex tracks. My friend Keith Walton, who is a former boxer who trains professionals, also coaches several Northern jockeys in the skills of the noble art. Keith, a regular on the racecourse in the summer, has a top prospect in David Crawford, known locally as the Black Panther. He promises that when Crawford next appears on a televised bill, he will ask Nick Halling about his father’s health.

Returning to Payne, a horse called Princehood started for us with the remarkable veteran Louie Dingwall who trained on the beach at Sandbanks, in Dorset, where her shack, with its own petrol pump, would represent at least £1 million worth of real estate nowadays – ask Harry Redknapp! One day, aged 86, and with limited vision, she drove her horsebox all the way to the south of France and won the Grand Prix des Alpes-Maritime and £13 grand with Treason Trial, her own horse.

Princehood, a 300gns auction buy, did nothing while in Dorset, but, sent north, won a BBC televised sprint on a Saturday at Lanark just before it closed in October 1977. In typical Payne fashion, he had told us to back him two days earlier in a modest race at Doncaster where he ran a stinker. Nobody had the foresight to take the 14/1 as we watched with dismay during our work break in the King and Keys pub in Fleet Street that Saturday.

Payne’s time at Middleham had various controversies, one of which was the suggestion that as more owners were attracted to the stable, it outgrew its capacity and there were instances of multiple occupation of boxes, fine with a mare and foal, but less advisable with hard-trained racehorses. Also, his accounting was reputedly off course, with it often taking several more than four quarters in a horse to complete the ownership whole! After his wife had gone off with the singer Gilbert O’Sullivan, Payne reputedly went to live in America with his male hairdresser!

The Johnston days happily have been much more conventional. From the outset in 1988 and by October 2017, in saddling Dominating to win at Pontefract, Mark became only the third trainer to saddle 4,000 winners in the UK. Less than a year later, Poet’s Society (Frankie Dettori) won at York at 20/1 to make it a record 4,194 wins and then, in August last year, Johnston crossed the unconscionable milestone of 5,000 victories when Dubai Mile won at Kempton.

Thus, with just the 5,000 (and a few) to aim at, Charlie set off with a 33-1 fourth at Lingfield on Monday and has runners all week from today (Wednesday). Everyone will be wishing this personable young man all the best.

One thing that hasn’t yet taken much of his attention is the use of the family plane, which Mark flies all over Europe and which Charlie concedes is a massive help in the organisation of their time.

“No, flying the plane is probably something that might happen eventually. There is no doubt that it has been a great advantage to be able to supervise everything on the gallops for two-thirds of the morning and still be down at Ascot or Newmarket in time for the first race at 2 o’clock.

“I’m not sure that as well as handing over the licence, Dad will be too excited about being an unpaid pilot for me; but flying has helped keep us in touch with everything, and it would be a shame if it were no longer available to us” he said. It would also make that lovely grass runway just behind the barns a severe waste.

Mark Johnston is relatively young at 63, compared with other senior trainers like Sir Michael Stoute and John Gosden, the latter now named on a joint-licence with son Thady. But, as Charlie says, “He didn’t want to go on indefinitely. He and Mum have built all this up from nothing, and he never wanted it to just fritter away. I’ve no intention of that ever happening!”

Don’t worry   - it won’t!

- TS

(Late) Monday Musings: The Ol’ One-Two

/in /by

You have a mare like Epatante, winner of a past Champion Hurdle, successful in 11 and placed in seven more of her 19 career runs and you now know – having witnessed Aintree last year, that she probably ought to be contesting races of 2m4f up, writes Tony Stafford.

With the weather as it has been and the Ascot course’s susceptibility to rapid changes of going, Nicky Henderson was pushed into allowing her to take on stable star – sorry, world phenomenon – Constitution Hill as the calendar compressed when the Fighting Fifth came along.

Instead of the queen, she became the high-maintenance Queen Consort, by her liege’s side until turning for home and then deferring graciously while accepting a £20k pay-day for her trouble.

Once the pattern was set, who was to complain when the old one-two was set in motion again for yesterday’s Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle? While there were five starters, the box which brought the big two to Sunbury might just as easily have been transporting the elite pair across Lambourn for a routine gallop.

As they turned for home, Highway One O One had the temerity to sit in between his betters, still just second as the mare started to flex her muscles. You could not have predicted what happened from that point based on what you had seen until that point, but the evidence of Cheltenham last March and Gosforth Park last month gave the game away.

Mark Johnson’s commentary told it all. Just over a length before two out, three lengths from Epatante on the way to the last; stretched to eight at that final flight and once he met it running, a 17-length margin on a track where distances are never exaggerated unlike many courses in winter ground.

For two little spins behind Constitution Hill, Epatante has picked up around £50k this season and is now that amount short of £1 million in career earnings. Nicky Henderson seems to be favouring going straight to the Festival with this best hurdler I have ever seen and rightly so, I’m sure.

It’s that final kick that is other-worldly. Horses can finish well: he finishes them off and with no suggestion of any weakness; ground or track, style of racing – he has it all.

The Irish must be hoping that somehow his level of ability suddenly drops off, but if Henderson has acquired anything in a training career exceeding 40 years, it’s knowing how to win a big race with a favourite. And even he has never had a favourite like this one.

I was delighted when I saw him at the Horserace Writers and Photographers lunch after he collected his Order Of Merit award for his outstanding career. He was truly chuffed and I told him I thought it well deserved. The shy nature that often comes out in his dealings with the media was there all through that afternoon.

His reputation, already secured, will now have the added insurance, as with Sir Henry Cecil and Frankel, of having his best-ever horse towards the end of his career. It’s probably a case of how long he, Michael Buckley and the horse can be bothered with steam-rollering good (but not good enough) opponents.

I was less delighted to pick up Covid there, after two and a half years of escaping it. I got it mildly, but you never know what’s underneath. At least, it’s not like being a little bit pregnant!

It was a great day for heroes old and new at Kempton yesterday and if anyone thinks that Kempton is a sharp track, the result of the redirected Long Walk Hurdle, from a frozen this time Ascot, would have entertained second thoughts at least.

Here that great stayer Paisley Park came from the back of the field to out-finish Goshen – in the new long-distance role which he can adorn – and Champ by an emphatic margin in a domestic private affair. The Irish will be out in force at Cheltenham in March, but Andrew Gemmell’s heroic 10-year-old can be relied upon to keep his end up.

Times are often misleading but if you had an involvement with Rare Edition, the Charlie Longsdon novice who easily won Monday’s Kempton opener, you would be thrilled to see that his winning time was only two seconds slower than that recorded by Constitution Hill. A seven-length winner, it would be great if this initially non-winning graduate from the Irish point-to-point field, but now unbeaten in four for Longsdon, could challenge the stars next March.

One invader from Ireland that could be there to challenge him is the one-time Derby favourite, High Definition, who made a winning hurdles debut at Leopardstown from the Joseph O’Brien stable ten minutes before Rare Edition showed his paces.

High Definition had won his first two races as a juvenile, including a Group 2, before going into winter quarters with the endorsement of Joseph’s father Aidan ringing in the professionals’ ears. Even when he came back late and looking lazy in the Dante, the story still held over logic, but he never made it to Epsom and then never looked in with a chance when he did get his chance in a Classic on the Curragh in late June.

Until yesterday, High Definition had gone more than two years without winning – his best performance being a second to Alenquer in the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup over ten furlongs in May.

Because there are so many horses that want for some inexplicable reason to take on Messrs Mullins, Elliott, de Bromhead and, yes, when he has a suitable one, O’Brien junior, you get the sort of field that faced High Definition. Twenty-seven runners around Leopardstown, but happily that’s a big, wide track, and it’s made easier as self-selection probably boils this down to three lots of nine.

The old instruction by the UK starters in the days of Gordon Richards either side of WW2 and the old 'gate' starts of “triers at the front” is an approximation to how it works in Irish (and some British) novice races today. They quickly sort out into manageable groupings – three races in one.

Just a look at the first seven there: O’Brien, from Jessica Harrington, Willie Mullins, Peter Fahey, de Bromhead, Mullins again and Gordon Elliott, tells a tale if not a definitive one. The other 20 have to look after themselves, although there’s some pricey types back there too on probably different time-schedules with handicaps in mind for many.

The Racing TV shrewdies – and Boxing Day’s lot, which included Dave Nevison, were sharp enough – noticed High Definition is still  a colt, until next Sunday at any rate when he becomes a horse – of course! The Coolmore NH stallion roster is a highly lucrative end of the business and they reasoned that could be his magnum opus.

It was only on December 20th that High Definition morphed from the usual Coolmore owner group to Mrs J Magnier’s sole possession. I’m sure the others can come back in if and when they wish. I’d love to see High Definition at Cheltenham, possibly measuring up to the more NH-oriented Rare Edition, who showed his paces just 10 minutes later.

Those same Racing TV boys seemed to think the Triumph Hurdle is all but won already, a pretty complacent view at this stage. The Willie Mullins-trained Lossiemouth, another of those unbeaten French purchases, won her graded race for juveniles in almost five seconds slower time than High Definition earlier in the card, but she impressed Dave in particular.

She did win as she liked, making it three easy victories in three. A rare bargain from France at €14k before she had run, she is by Great Pretender, from the family of smart flat-racer Lord Glitters. She must be one of the cheaper buys to grace the Cheltenham-voracious Ricci colours.

Once more, Coquelicot has run in the couple of days before my article, at Kempton yesterday for a 3m mares’ handicap hurdle with six in opposition. She beat a Dan Skelton rival in West Balboa last time at Sandown and this time had the favourite Get A Tonic from the same source ten lengths behind. Alas, on revised weight terms and after a more contested early lead than she's recently encountered, she gave best to the aforementioned Charlie Longsdon-trained Glimpse Of Gala, the rest of the field strung out behind at five length intervals. Hard luck, Mr Editor and partners, but she'll be winning again soon.

- TS

Monday Musings: My Boy Micky

/in /by

After a totally blank week of jumping and not much some-weather racing either, a £5k to the winner race ought not be taking much of my attention as we wait for the elements to relent in time for the big Christmas programmes in the UK and Ireland, writes Tony Stafford.

The Irish took the first step back to normality as Thurles returned with a nice pre-Christmas card yesterday and Lingfield may well provide yet another surprise in its new-drainage incarnation by welcoming jumping back to the UK later this morning. [Sadly not, Ed.}

Recently, Gary Moore described the 2022-23 jumps season as his “worst-ever”, referring to one of his local tracks, the above-mentioned Lingfield, as the only one where he has found “proper soft ground”. Moore cites the dry summer; low sun when racing does go ahead eliminating hurdles and fences in many races, and unsuitably fast ground when racing is actually on.

Now the latest spate of abandonments – sometimes delayed until the horses are in the paddock ready to go for the opening race or while horses are still arriving at the tracks – has added to the difficulties. Horses need to be readied and kept up to scratch in anticipation of racing’s proceeding, even though, as Gary says, they know it’s futile. It has all made it hell for trainers and most importantly for the people that pay the bills – the owners.

The lack of clarity of thought descended to a new level of wishful thinking from officialdom on Saturday when Polytrack fixtures, at Lingfield and Chelmsford, due to be televised on ITV4 amid much trumpeting that terrestrial television was keeping the racing show on the road, both grudgingly had to accept defeat after two morning inspections each.

I had occasion to talk to Roger Teal soon after he had arrived with his intended runner at the Lingfield stables at around 9.a.m. in the full knowledge that a second inspection was imminent. He said: “I’ve just got here, it’s minus 5, what do you think?” If it were me, I don’t think I would have waited for an official announcement and a similar situation caused an identical outcome 85 miles across the snow-covered deep-frozen Home Counties around the M25 in deepest Essex.

I had been at Chelmsford nine days earlier when Becky Smith had come on a mission to ride a couple of Micky Hammond runners at the evening meeting there. One fourth and one unplaced did nothing in much-needed points towards her wavering challenge for the amateur riders’ flat crown and she has also been frustrated that a similar close bid for the lady amateurs’ jumps title has also stalled.

With time very short, she conceded she will have to try again next year, but her attitude sums up the entire ethos of her boss, Micky Hammond, and his assistant Gemma Hogg, Becky’s elder sister.

I remember Micky as a top NH rider for Reg Akehurst among others in the South in the 1970’s and 80’s before he went north to ride for George Moore at Middleham and never came back to his native Surrey. Amazingly, he has been training since 1990 and this year equalled his previous best flat-race tally of 19, set in 2015, when Carnival Zain won for the fifth time on August 26.

For the next three months, while this hard-working dual-purpose handler continued to send in winners over jumps, the wish to set a flat-race personal best looked, like Becky’s twin challenges, likely to be frustrated.

Yesterday, having spoken to the horse’s owner, Hammond decided to send Myboymax down to Wolverhampton, a track where he has had amazing success. Myboymax, according to the trainer, “had no chance”, and he added, “the owner hoped he might beat one”.

While favourite Lady Percival, attempting a third consecutive course and distance win in a row, set the pace, Aiden Brookes sat last but in touch off an even gallop. Turning for home it was clear that two were going better than the leader as first Alan King’s Thunder Ahead and then Myboymax went past, the latter staying on the better at 66/1.

That was by no means the only big-priced winner for this under-rated handler, whose 2022 prizemoney tally of £189k is more than £50,000 above his previous best set in that vintage 2015 season.

What is uncanny is that, while there have been 27 jumps winners this season, the prizemoney earned differs by less than £1,000 at £188k in that discipline. That is sure to increase a good deal in money and numbers and he is within only six of matching last season’s win figure. In 2022, adding the 19 jumps wins from the turn of the year to the end of last season on April 23, to the 27 and 20 flat, his calendar tally is 66 wins.

Hammond has few major owners, dealing mainly with locals and partnerships. There is a small involvement with Middleham Park Racing, but ironically it was from that ownership when trained by Richard Hannon, that Myboymax was bought for just £800 at Doncaster sales on October 22, two years ago.

Since then, the Myboycharlie gelding has run 22 times for five wins, five second places and six thirds, earning around £30k. It’s not easy at bargain-basement level, but Myboymax has done far more than anyone was entitled to expect. That’s the measure of Micky Hammond.

**

The big news of the weekend was, of course, the revelation that Frankie Dettori would restrict himself to one more year of money-spinning riding before retiring after the 2023 Breeders’ Cup.

There is no question he has been the supreme big-race rider of his generation, neatly taking over as Lester Piggott left the scene. The torrent of knowledgeable trainers who have signalled his imminent retirement with accolades of the highest respect and indeed affection are a true indication of his uniqueness.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s gone. In some ways that was true of Lester. In the case of Dettori, there is no fear of that.

In a way it’s hard to know what to expect from the middle age portion of his life. Will he bother with racing as, say, an agent to owners? Many would queue up to be seen with him. Will it be enough? Then there is his own big family and the children to guide through the teens and 20’s.

So many of the brilliant rides and incredible horses will always be there to see repeatedly, with no doubt the two Racing television channels battling over the next week – if racing continues to be as bleak – to out-cover each other with highlights of his career.

For me, I just need to open my cabinet and remember the time in 1996 when we collaborated on a book, “A year in the life of Frankie Dettori”. It was already in type and about to go out to publishers when September 28 happened. Seven wins out of seven at Ascot and we had had to find a way to include it in the chronicle of his year.

In those days everything had to be put into metal type on linotype machines, so anything you wanted to add, had to be as done as a prefix or suffix. The former solution was agreed with literary agent, Christopher Little – sadly no longer with us and the man in the same role in the Harry Potter books – and Peter Burrell, Frankie’s commercial manager who still holds that position a quarter-century on.

For me it’s enough to look at the front cover and the beaming smile that has become renowned around the world over the decades. Apart from the title, there’s a single quote lifted from the Daily Telegraph – I would guess from the pen of the late John Oaksey.

It says: “Frankie Dettori possesses the looks of an innocent choir-boy, the lifestyle of a loveable rogue, the dress style befitting a Milanese millionaire and the riding skill of Wild Bill Hickock.  What more needs to be said about this singular genius?”

  • TS

Monday Musings: Weather and a Two Mile Monopoly?

/in /by

Cork managed to race yesterday as indeed, rather more surprisingly, did Southwell, but when we will get some more jumping – in the UK at any rate – is possibly more open to question, writes Tony Stafford.

Today’s two cards have already gone and the Arena Racing Company, which runs Southwell, can giveth with one hand and taketh away with another. Both Lingfield, with an additional, and Wolverhampton, with a scheduled evening card are in the Arena stable.

I was at Chelmsford City briefly the other evening and Neil Graham, their ever-present boss, was anticipating his track might be in line for some of the more 48-hour emergency meetings that trigger when jumps cards are in the process of being lost.

He said that he hadn’t been lucky in the ballot yet, unlike all the others, but reasoned Chelmsford’s turn might be near. “Those tracks that already have been lucky, cannot reapply for ten <or did he say 14?> days”. Chelmsford race on Thursday, so that must be a pre-programmed date.

Fixtures are power in racing. No wonder Southwell battled so hard to keep their fixture alive, employing frost covers and delaying the morning inspection to 9.30 a.m. in the hope that any morning warming after a freezing night, will have had maximum effect. Watching the racing, everything looked fine. Well done, Arena, and Ben Pauling who had a nice double on the card.

Sometimes we try to make bricks where there is no straw. If you will excuse me for once, I’m a little under the weather – that sort of annoying cold that provides alternate nostril routes for moisture to trickle down the face at most inopportune times. As a result, this will be a case of short-changing the readers and hopefully the editor will take a charitable view.

Energumene took the opportunity to return to action at Cork in the Bar One Racing Hilly Way Chase. The best two-mile chaser – possibly for all this millennium [with apologies to Moscow Flyer, Master Minded, Sprinter Sacre and Altior – Ed.] – had to concede 10lb to the two horses that finished immediately (but miles) behind him while the second favourite, Master McShee, who was off level weights, finished a long last having badly burst blood vessels.

Prize money was a sliding €59k, €19k, €9k with €4k for the hapless invalid. Willie Mullins often provides multiple entries in Champion Hurdle eliminators through the year, but he refrained from doing so here. The Henry De Bromhead-trained and Rachael Blackmore-ridden Epson Du Houx was the beneficiary of Master McShee’s misfortune, not that trainer – or owner Gigginstown House Stud – needs a hand-out, 15 lengths back in a welcome back exhibition.

It is hard to see from where serious competition will come for Energumene in the immediate future, save of course Edwardstone, who stated his case for the Queen Mother Champion Chase with that superb effort at Sandown in the Tingle Creek Chase last weekend. That put paid to Greanateen and Shishkin, for the time being at least. But Energumene, like stablemate Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle, has built an air of invincibility that makes quotes of even money for next March look value indeed.

Events on the flat continue apace overseas and Ryan Moore had another inflation-busting pick up in one of the races on Hong Kong’s biggest days at Sha Tin yesterday. Riding the six-year-old Wellington for Hong Kong-based English trainer Richard Gibson, Moore added this near £1.3 million first prize to the Japan Cup a fortnight earlier, and again with a weaving through the field ride.

In Tokyo, there was a mile-and-a-half to make his run with Vela Azul on their way to collecting that £2.6 million. It still took a gen of the rarest kind to manage it. Here it was just six furlongs but still Ryan, in my estimation riding at his best since before the serious injury a few years back which he was understandably not keen to draw attention to, was sublime.

He gave Wellington time to find his stride, brought him steadily through to challenge just before the last half-furlong and the prize was his. You can just imagine him licking his lips at some of the Middle Eastern riches that he hasn’t always been in line to challenge for. I bet William Buick and the other Dubai Carnival regulars wouldn’t mind if he kept clear of Riyadh and Meydan next month and onwards.

  • TS
Your first 30 days for just £1